Tag Archives: Unbelievable

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England .
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
And get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?

And if people from Poland are called Poles
Then people from Holland should be Holes
And the Germans, Germs.

And let’s not forget the Americans, who changed s to z, but that’s another story.

This is the clearest explanation I’ve heard regarding the debt crisis and the credit bottleneck that is stifling the world’s economy.

Helga is the proprietor of a bar. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now , but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers’ loans).

Word gets around about Helga’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands Helga gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer – the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Helga’s gross sales volumes and paper profits increase massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

He is rewarded with a six figure bonus.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These “securities” are then bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as “AA Secured Bonds” are really debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses

The traders all receive a six figure bonus.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga’s bar. He so informs Helga. Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga’s 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Helga’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations; her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

They all receive six a figure bonus.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who’ve never been in Helga’s bar.

SO, today I am off on the school-run to collect BabyMibs, front garden clean and tidy as per usual, and upon my return, I find THIS dumped on the front lawn!

Exhibit A

Now, the only peeps who knew I needed one of these were two locals, (they both claim no knowledge of this) and our local Freecycle network, where as any of you know, address info isn’t exchanged unless you agree on a collection!

So I currently have no idea who “dumped” a brand-new fork on my lawn!

Mibsy’s PI service reinstated to try to investigate who, why and HOW!

Or maybe, my new country has special fairy helpers that I haven’t yet heard of!

I have been watching the news today with more than a degree of disbelief. Don’t get me wrong, I do not pretend to actually have any real working knowledge of the banking world, but surely, it won’t do any long-term good to put off the guys who can actually do their jobs, and do them well? I am but a mere lowly paid mortal as are probably most of my readers here, and have more than a healthy degree of dislike for the banker’s bonuses and pay scales in general, BUT, when you are hired to do a job for a set wage, which it would appear Mr Hester was, and then someone, NOT your boss turns around and says, “sorry mate, yes you’ve worked hard and done what was expected of you, but you can’t actually have what was promised you”, then I have a problem with that.

The amounts do defy belief in a way, his bonus alone is more than enough to set me and my son up for life both in security for life and a business of our own, BUT, in a way it is all relative, not one of us would like to take on a job then be told that we won’t be able to have what we are due, would we?

It’s not as though he awarded himself the bonus, a whole board of folks did that, including one notable board member representative from our own UK Government!

I find it incredibly unfair that this poor guy, who has simply set out to achieve what he was paid to do at the end of the day, has been singled out and lambasted by those very same money-grabbing oiks who have systematically claimed whatever they could get away with at our expense.

I did a small straw poll today amongst those of us to whom that bonus alone would have been a lottery win, and not one of them was actually against the guy getting what he was due, despite the vast difference in pay and lifestyle, so to me this is yet another example of a political smokescreen for something else.

Think about it folks, if the leader of RBS quits, ( and who right now could blame him?) who else is going to want to take up the reins, knowing they will get publically bullied and lambasted by guys ( and probably gals) who are already living quite comfortably off the state ( ergo us) and will no doubt have very lucrative ( and secretive) arrangements made in the private sector to fall back on once their political careers are over?

I don’t have an answer to this problem, but do feel for the one poor guy who got picked on to suit someone else’s agenda.

Tonight, I have just watched the second instalment of Channel Four’s Black Mirror Trilogy and I have to say, this time after eagerly awaiting a mini-series, I have not thus far been disappointed.

This series should have been called Close Mirror, shortly after the first episode was aired last Sunday, which involved a Prime Minister having to go the extra mile for his country, shall we say ( I won’t give the game away in case you haven’t yet seen it), our very own Mr Cameron actually stood up to the Euro Bullies and said “NO”. Although in real life I rather suspect that was all for show and there will be some kind of deal brokered behind the scenes quietly!

Exactly WHAT lengths would our beloved Government go to in the name of Queen and Country?

Oink Oink tee hee!

This week’s episode was shown directly after the X Factor Finale, (which I didn’t watch BTW), and proved to be an all-too-close depiction of our modern electronic lives, with strong echoes of Farenheit 451. I particularly liked the “hamsters on treadmills” vs the “elite few” analogy. Again, I won’t say too much so as not to spoil it for those who haven’t as yet seen it, but it does make me wonder about all these technological marvels that we all “must have”.

The internet is a fantastic place, the whole world and its’ libraries at our fingertips, BUT it’s not a substitute for real life. I so hate this whole “must be in touch at all times” or “must-have this and that” culture that we appear to have now, tis nice to switch off all devices and just chill in the real world with nature and real people now and then.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what we have access to nowadays, but I simply won’t get into debt purely to own whatever the next in-thing is, then get stressed about it, nor will I let go completely of so-called old-fashioned ideas and things. What would we all do IF for instance, all power simply went off tonight?

Good grief, can you imagine the sheer stress that would cause ( not in the least to any comping duckies at Advent time lol), the chaos amongst the “youth” and the inability for most businesses to manage. We rely far too much on the “ethereal” and need to get a lot more grounded in the real also.

Balance, that’s what we are all lacking, I don’t know if that was the exact message that the makers of Black Mirror were meaning to convey, but that’s the over-riding one I have taken away with me!

Do go watch it, highly recommended, and do remember, it’s not real, honest!

After reading my friends’ blog posts, I am absolutely furious. ANOTHER RADIO 4 RANT , where she vents quite rightly about a radio program where a “panel” reckoned money cannot buy you happiness, ( yeah right, THEY I am sure don’t have to choose between food and heat each week), and her follow-up one here …. I FEEL LIKE I AM SWIMMING IN CUSTARD , where she describes a situation I am sure most of us will sympathise with right now, no matter how thrifty you are or how many extra layers you put on, you cannot win. The more you “save” or skimp on, the higher the costs for the little you do use go!

How DARE the UK Government keep bleating on one hand that “we are all in this together”, when we blatantly are NOT. The bills for THEIR multiple homes are paid for BY US. They say we all have to tighten our belts, it’s all for our own good in the long-term, etc. If that is the case, then why oh why are we STILL donating mega amounts of cash abroad? I was always taught that charity begins at home, the British public is extremely charitable when we need to be, all on our own, we do NOT need to be forced into it. IF we are all feeling a bit more wealthy, then no doubt we will donate more, ALL BY OURSELVES.

And I am SO sick of the greedy utility companies constantly bleating about their rising wholesale costs, repair bills, taxes, you name it, they invent it, then seeing their quarterly PROFIT statements rising ever higher. Now correct me if I am wrong here, but aren’t profits listed AFTER outgoings?

And if all these so-called “Green” taxes are supposed to be helping our environment, then what exactly are they being spent on?

Is there some huge “air cleaning machine” somewhere out there that we don’t know about yet?

And please, don’t anyone dare tell me it goes on alternative energy, because with all the subsidies that those companies get paid they are NOT real alternatives they are more profit-making (and environment destroying) devices.

It really wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it comes out in a few years time that all these so-called “green” government ministers also had huge shareholds in these “wonderful” new schemes that we are forced to pay for whilst we go without heating, lights, and in far too many cases these days, food!

Do these suited, well-heeled clowns actually KNOW or care that our own old folk, many of whom fought for our country in years gone by, will most likely die this winter, AGAIN?

Do they know or care that far too many people who are already on the bread-line will simply get forgotten and end up on the streets, purely because their meagre incomes cannot keep up with the rising costs?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for fair taxes and paying our way BUT PLEASE politicians, you are leaching the lifeblood from our country mainly from those who do the hardest work and can ill afford the relentless hits!

Going back to my friends’ post on the radio show, yes, I am afraid money CAN buy you happiness, it can sure take the stress out of everyday life, allow for a few treats like a hot meal now and then, and make you feel secure, if only in your home and basic living standards, but hey, isn’t that something else our government keeps insisting on as well, somewhat contradictorially? Eat well, live well?

Let us keep just a little bit more of our hard-earned and maybe, just maybe, we will be able to do just that!